In an appearance at a Let’s Move event, First Lady Michelle Obama blamed perceived rising crime rates on bored kids who have no playground equipment.
“Why are we confused about why crime rates are going up?” she asked. “It’s not a complicated set of scenarios, unless people don’t really understand just what a wasteland so many kids are living in in terms of activity.
“… when we look at crime rates and all that sort of stuff, it’s like, these are a bunch of bored kids that are unsupervised who don’t know how to play. If we start there—and then we give them a gun. And then you’ve got such a lethal combination.”
Providing playground equipment is a laudable goal, but if she really looked at crime rates and stuff, she’d find that drugs, gangs, broken families and a revolving-door justice system play a far larger role in fostering crime than do broken swing sets.
